Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem

Published by Ecco on October 3, 2023

Every other Jonathan Lethem book I’ve read, I enjoyed. This one didn’t speak to me. The story, to the extent that one exists, is told in a series of vignettes that explore an significant number of mostly male characters of varying ages and races and their relationships in Brooklyn between the 1930s and the upcoming end of the Trump administration.

The first sentence of chapter 2 is “This is a story about what nobody knows.” Count me among those who don’t know. Lethem later confesses that he’s probably losing the reader. Count me among the lost. Confessing that you're turning off readers is a very postmodernist thing to do, but it makes the book unappealing for anyone but diehard students of postmodernism.

I don’t fault Lethem for lack of ambition. I imagine he was trying to create a micro-history of Brooklyn with an emphasis on its unsavory flavors, a chronicle of changes that replaced impoverished criminals with wealthy ones. I fault the meandering execution, the episodic storytelling that never quite coheres, the failure to encourage readers to invest in the characters. To me, the novel felt like scenes cut from a movie. I would rather have seen the movie.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. Lethem’s attempts to create a level of intimacy with the reader that he fails to achieve. I generally enjoy Lethem's prose, as I did in this novel, but sharp sentences just aren't enough. Some street scenes are vivid; some characters have the feel of authenticity. But — perhaps because I’m getting old — I lost track the characters and then lost track of my attempts to keep track of them. Finally, I lost interest.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Lazy City by Rachel Connolly

First published in the UK in 2023; published by W.W. Norton & Company/ ‎ Liveright on October 3, 2023

Lazy City is a snapshot of a young woman’s life in modern Belfast. Since it isn’t much more than that and since her life is largely wasted, I have mixed feelings about the novel.

Erin was dating Mikey before she moved away to attend a university. She always felt a distance from other people but felt less distance from her college roommate Kate. She had difficulty processing Kate’s death. After a few weeks, she walked away from her academic life and returned to Belfast. Erin stayed briefly with her violent and unforgiving mother before it became clear that she was not welcome. This is the backstory of a novel that opens with Erin working as Anne Marie’s live-in nanny and cleaner.

Erin is a lonely party girl. She knows her housing situation is temporary and that she’ll need to find a new place to live (and thus a new job) if Anne Marie reconciles with the husband from whom she separated. Erin avoids thinking about her future by getting drunk most nights, sometimes adding coke or ketamine to the party after the bars close. She hangs out with her friend Declan, a gay bartender/artist whose physician father is from Sri Lanka, but otherwise tries to avoid people who know her.

Erin doesn’t know if she wants to reconnect with Mikey although she knows she will. She gets along with Mikey’s brother, who might be the novel’s nicest character (apart from Declan), but he has serious drug and alcohol problems. While she’s pondering what to do about Mikey, she meets a somewhat older American who is teaching English literature at Queens. She has mixed feelings about her drunken decision to sleep with him. She is soon sleeping with Mikey or the American a couple of nights each week.

Both Mikey and the American might have other relationships they are concealing from Erin. Why this should bother Erin baffles me since she isn’t telling either of her sex partners about her other sex partner, but Erin nevertheless feels victimized. Still, she manages to address her concerns with both men without hysteria or other pointless drama, which is to her credit.

Erin is bright and straightforward, not given to pretension. The American uses words like technocapitalism that he can only vaguely define. Erin wonders whether he is posing. She suspects that people like to blame capitalism for problems because it’s easier to repair economic systems than to repair people. She’s glad that the American doesn’t try to talk about the Troubles because he would probably say something that is culturally insensitive, or maybe she would, although she understands the people who survived the Troubles never talk about it.

Erin doesn’t feel she can tell anyone about the pain she associates with Kate’s loss. She isn’t particularly religious but she visits empty churches, lights a candle, and shares her life with Kate’s spirit.

Erin’s internal monologs, including her conversations with Kate, are sometimes insightful. She isn’t sure why she has sex with the American or Mikey. She chalks Mikey up to being a habit. She keeps sleeping with the American because “the loneliness in him means something to the loneliness in me.” Or maybe it’s the “sense that his vulnerability makes mine less obvious? That I have the upper hand?” Only later does it occur to her that he might be asking himself why he wants to have sex with her.

Rachel Connolly creates a sense of intimacy with her unadorned, conversational writing style. She portrays Erin as a likable but troubled woman, the kind of person for whom it is easy to be both sympathetic and impatient. Erin wants to be true to herself, but she seems to think that her true self should be drunk and high most nights. She needs to get her life together. That’s presumably the novel’s point. By the last chapter, as she makes New Year’s resolutions, it’s clear that she understands what she needs to do. It’s less clear that she has the will to do it.

Novels like this one, depicting a few months that aren’t going well in the life of a young woman, seem to attract publishers. I assume they attract readers or publishers wouldn’t buy them. I often feel a bit disappointed when I read them, perhaps because my impatience with the troubled young woman overcomes my sympathy. Erin’s epiphany — that her return to Belfast was an act of running away but also an act of running toward something — is a bit obvious, particularly after Erin spells it out for the reader. So is the last sentence, as Erin leaves a church and starts walking forward, presumably charting the path that will be the rest of her life. (I hope that’s not a spoiler, but I’m not sure how it is possible to spoil a story that has no real ending.)

The novel doesn't amount to much, although the writing is sufficiently sharp that I am hesitant to condemn the story as shallow. I recommend it as a decent slice of life story about yet another troubled young woman, but I can’t recommend it as anything more than that.

RECOMMENDED

Judgment Prey by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 3, 2023

This is a Prey novel, so Lucas Davenport is the featured character. As is increasingly common in Prey novels, Virgil Flowers plays a nearly equal role. John Sandford published his last standalone Flowers novel in 2019. Since then, he’s published four Lucas Davenport and two Letty Davenport novels. Virgil can’t complain about a lack of love because he gets cameos in the Letty novels (just as Letty earned a cameo in this one) and is increasingly likely to be a co-star in the Lucas novels.

Virgil is hoping to transition away from law enforcement. He sold a novel that is about to be published and is working on another. Virgil tells Lucas that a writer told him that “books have three parts: the set-up and the climax, and then in the middle, the swamp.” Sandford is a master of the swamp — the characters and subplots that keep the reader entertained while awaiting the big reveal that drives mysteries or the final confrontation that drives thrillers.

The set-up in Judgment Prey is simple. Two boys and their dad are shooting hoops in the back yard. They go inside when it starts to rain. Someone in a hoodie follows them inside, shoots them all (not with the efficiency of a professional), spares a baby in a basinet, and leaves with their cellphones and laptops. The dad is a federal judge so the FBI joins the investigation. Lucas is asked to show the flag for the U.S. Marshals since protecting judges is part of their remit. Flowers shows up on behalf of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The St. Paul police do most of the legwork but Davenport and Flowers team up to look for the clues that other cops miss.

The plot differs from many crime novels in that the killer’s identity is soon known to the reader. The novel is not a whodunit. Instead, the reveal explains the killer's motive, a key that must be unlocked before Lucas and Virgil can solve the crime.

The judge’s wife, Maggie Cooper, is understandably distraught and ultimately vengeful. She intends to find the killer and end his life. To that end, she receives moral support from her best friend, Ann Melton, with whom she occasionally has sex. Whether Maggie will kill the killer before Lucas and Virgil catch him, or whether he will add Maggie to his list of victims, is the source of the novel's dramatic tension.

The swamp involves the investigation of people who might have a motive to kill the judge, including criminals he has sentenced. Davenport and Flowers also look into a charitable organization that was expecting a donation from the judge. The organization turns out to be shady, leading to a collateral investigation that prompts a couple more murders. The killer also comes after

Characterization is typically built in the swamp. The have been so many Prey novels (not to mention Flowers novels) that the characters are now well known. The swamp instead gives them a chance to find new ways to insult each other. That never gets old.

The motive for killing the judge and his family struck me as unlikely, but people kill for unlikely reasons so I’ll give Sandford’s reveal a pass. Otherwise, the climax involves the kind of action that is common to Prey novels, complete with chases and gunplay. That climax doesn’t quite resolve the main plot, but a second climax does. All of this is great fun for a John Sandford fan, which presumably includes most readers who enjoy crime novels. Judgment Prey doesn’t stand out from the large stack of Prey novels, but even an average Prey novel is worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Traitors Gate by Jeffrey Archer

Published by HarperCollins on September 26, 2023

For several novels (this one is number six), Jeffrey Archer has been following the stellar career of William Warwick as he has worked his way up the chain of command in London law enforcement. Warwick is a model of rectitude, a perfect officer who has a perfect marriage to a perfect wife and the smartest and most perfectly behaved children in all of England and thus the world. The ideal kids love learning British history because what could be more fascinating than knowing the year that William the Conqueror died? To be fair, British royalty is even more fascinating to every character in the novel. American readers might need to stifle a yawn at the various history lectures and Inside Royalty discussions that fill the pages while the plot pauses for a nap.

William becomes Chief Superintendent early in this novel, continuing his meteoric career ascension. He receives the news of his promotion while orchestrating the transportation of the crown jewels from the Tower of London to Parliament, where the Queen is about to give a boring speech. Readers who love the esoterica of British royal customs (I don’t know how many Americans are in that group) might enjoy all the gushing prose about Her Majesty’s performance of her royal duties. The fascination with the Queen is compounded by drooling descriptions of the red robes with white ermine worn by Lords, the Queen’s carriage, and all the other frivolity that accompanies British pomp and circumstance. Readers who have no interest in such pageantry can skip several sections of the novel. (Many will want to skip past the conversation that extolls the virtues of Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair takes office during the novel, but characters keep their opinions about Blair to themselves.)

As always, William turns to Detective Inspector Ross Hogan when he needs something shady done and doesn’t want to sully his reputation. As always, the story features courtroom scenes involving William’s father, a barrister with a rigid stick up him bum who usually prosecutes for the Crown but occasionally represents defendants on the condition that they are actually innocent. As always, Booth Watson is an unethical barrister who opposes William’s father while serving the interest of greed. As always, Watson’s greediest client is Miles Faulkner who, as always, is assisted in his efforts at grifting his by ex-wife Christina, unless he happens to be grifting Christina as he does in this novel, as always. At this point, an AI could probably write these novels, perhaps more creatively than Archer.

Courtroom theatrics are generally the best elements in the Warwick novels, although Archer muddles some of the details. In one trial, Williams’ father elicits testimony from Hogan that methamphetamine is more commonly known as ecstasy, when in fact they are entirely different drugs. One might think that a cop would know that, even if the elder Warwick is too busy hobnobbing with members of the upper class to be bothered with knowledge of the cases he prosecutes. In a different case, the narrative three times refers to a witness as the client of Watson when Watson is prosecuting. As a prosecutor, his client is the Crown, not the witness. These are the kinds of errors an editor should have noticed. Still, the central courtroom scene has the kind of Perry Mason gotcha questions that enliven courtroom dramas.

Watson starts off the novel by trying to pull a con on a widow, offering to underpay for her gallery before reselling it at a hefty profit to Miles. William’s wife Beth intervenes to save the widow. Beth is an art dealer but has been invited to apply as the director of a prestigious art museum where she once worked. Beth’s business partner Christina is yet again looking to undercut Beth, making her the worst friend in history and raising questions about Beth’s inability to see what a wretch she’s chosen for a BFF.

Miles keeps getting released (or escaping) from prison so that William can lock him up again. His grand scheme in this novel — well, I mentioned the crown jewels, so you can guess his criminal goal. Another subplot involves Miles’ switch of a real Rubens for a forgery that was donated to the museum where Beth is about to be reemployed. Naturally William wants to switch it back, notwithstanding that the original is now in Miles’ Manhattan apartment. This segment of the novel feels like a space filler, given the recurring theme of Miles and Christina exchanging forged paintings for real ones throughout the series.

The crown jewels caper is less a theft (because what pawn shop will pay a fair price for the crown jewels?) and more an opportunity to embarrass William. There is little suspense as William finds ways to thwart Miles’ various criminal schemes, but the crown jewels plot is at least more original than the switched paintings. In another moderately interesting subplot, Miles tries to set up Hogan for attempting to influence a juror in the drug case by shagging her during the trial. William is certain that Hogan would shag the woman if given the opportunity but is confident that Hogan would wait until after the verdict. It’s good to have friends who understand your virtues and weaknesses.

I suppose there is a final book in this series upcoming, as William has not yet been given the top job. Miles will presumably be released from prison to torment William yet again. I’m recommending this book because readers who haven’t read the other books in the series might not be bored by this one, but I hope Archer soon finds less tedious characters to write about.

RECOMMENDED

The Caretaker by Ron Rash

Published by Doubleday on September 26, 2023

The Caretaker is an unconventional story of love and loss. It combines a domestic drama with a war story, yet the loss is occasioned by lies rather than battlefield violence.

After their two daughters died, Daniel and Cora Hampton should have been kind to their son Jacob despite his instinct to rebel against their controlling nature. Instead, they disinherited him after he eloped with Naomi Clarke, a 16-year-old hotel maid. Naomi did not satisfy their small town standards of propriety.

After Naomi became pregnant, Jacob was drafted and sent to Korea. Jacob’s parents refused to look after Naomi so the task fell to Jacob’s friend Blackburn Gant, the caretaker at the local cemetery. Jacob and Naomi live in North Carolina but, after a confrontation with Daniel while Jacob is still in Korea, Naomi returns to her parents’ home in Tennessee to give birth.

Ron Rash takes the time to develop detailed backstories for the central characters. They all suffer from poor parenting. We learn how Blackburn’s parents disregarded his polio symptoms and made him work in the fields until he fell, clenching the soil with his fists for an hour, barely able to breathe until his father found him. He can walk with a bit of a limp but his facial muscles droop. Rash conveys Blackburn’s feeling of helplessness as he is stricken, followed his sense of shame at his appearance.

Naomi’s parents wanted her to marry a man who would help them with their farm. They made her drop out of school in third grade and were distressed when she left home to work in a motel. Naomi is sympathetic because, despite having little control over her life, she perseveres.

Daniel and Cora wanted Jacob to finish college and take over the family store. We see Jacob thriving at manual labor in the family sawmill because his father thought he would gladly return to college after spending the summer performing grueling work. Daniel didn’t understand that Jacob preferred work that tired his body, not his mind. He was made foreman before the end of the summer.

This is a story of parents who don’t listen to their children, who expect them to accept a dictated path rather than making their own lives, who treat children as property. It is ultimately a story of parental selfishness. When we think of evil people, we think of violence. Daniel and Cora Hampton do not behave violently but they are the personification of evil. Naomi’s parents are little better.

Jacob sees and causes death in the war. Rash describes Jacob’s most traumatic war moment in vivid detail. Jacob survives his wounds and holds on in anticipation of reuniting with Naomi and his child when he comes home. Losing that opportunity convinces him that he has lost everything. Naomi’s sister remarks that “the heart’s full knowing came only with loss.” Jacob wonders whether love is strongest after it can no longer be shared.

This review has danced around the plot. It’s impossible to explain why The Caretaker is so good without giving away the surprise that drives the story. To avoid saying too much, I can only reveal that Jacob, Naomi, and Blackburn are all devastated by a scheme that serves only the selfish interests of Daniel and Cora. Naomi’s father becomes an accomplice to the scheme when he learns of it.

The story seems to move toward an inevitable climax yet when the moment arrives, it takes a sharp turn, one that is foreshadowed yet (at least to me) unexpected. The novel’s final moments offer Blackburn a difficult choice, one that invites him to be just as selfish as the worst characters yet a choice that, in the logic of the novel, might serve everyone by setting multiple lives on a better course. What choice will Blackburn make? This is the kind of novel that invites readers to think about the choice that they would make. From strong characterization to an original plot to searing moments of drama, The Caretaker is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

RECOMMENDED